Alexander Coinage

Alexander the Great is the most famous king of ancient Greece, and he did much to revolutionize the world he lived in. King of Macedonia and most of the known world from 336-323 BC. His conquests are all the more remarkable when it is considered that he died when he was 33 years of age.

That he loved power there is little doubt, but he was well educated, the great philosopher Aristotle having been one of his teachers. It can be said that he brought Greek culture into the East. One thing he affected was coinage. He transformed it from an incompatible group of issues struck by independent cities and confederacies to a single massive issue with common designs and weights.

So important was this innovation that the designs of his coins were copied for centuries by cities of Asia and Greece which gained independence in century following Alexander’s death. The designs on Alexander’s coins are often laden with symbolism, kings, queens and presidents have use them to express ideas or to display their own likeness.

The front of his coinage often shows Hercules. Hercules was important to Alexander’s hereditary line, as they claimed to be descended from the mythological hero. It is largely based on this fact that they also claimed to be of full Greek blood, even though most of their neighbors in the main part of Greece considered them to be uncultured barbarians.